Degree Plan Advice - Can I finish in a year? Without starving to death?

[SolarKat]

My advice on this, if you're not sure what you want to do yet - you can start with the Gen Ed's, making sure you take College Algebra and Statistics (not through Statistics.com). THEN, take 7 business courses, either from the core or the AOS. At that point, you have a decision to make; continue on with the BSBA, or switch to the Data Analytics degree. It will be an extra $5000, so that may or may not make a difference at that point in time.

Just a quick point, if the student is planning to actually work in analytics after graduation. They're typically going to need solid Excel skills, and experience with statistical software. For a general degree, any intro stats course will do, but if you're going into analytics, you will be well served by taking a stats class that actually uses the stats package(s). I took intro stats (back when dinosaurs were taking intro stats & people were writing in FORTRAN), but I'm doing it again with Statistics.com specifically because they've incorporated four different software packages into the lesson plans. (You only have to choose one to learn & do the homework, but you have the materials, instructions, and very active professor and TA support for all 4 options). It's a great way to add chops to your resumÃ, working in Box Sampler, StatCrunch, Resampling Stats for Excel (RSXL), and R. So financially, the ALEKS option (or similar) is fine. But speaking practically, I think it's important to either take a project-based class, or making a determined effort to learn the software on your own, from very early on in the program. The intro class at Statistics.com does expect that you have some basic familiarity with Excel. Also, for scheduling purposes, the Statistics.com intro stats is 2 4-week sessions (works out to 9 weeks, with a week between the sessions). The rest of their classes in the AOS are 4 weeks long.

(I'll add that one of my kids is taking intro stats at his engineering college, and they're doing all of their work in R. So perhaps a community college might be another source for intro stats with statistical software exposure?)